War Eagle everybody! It’s time now for the Acid Reign Report on Auburn’s season opening win over the Eagles. It was a bit of a shaky start for the new-look Auburn offense, but the defense resembled one of the best Pat Dye/Wayne Hall units back in the late 1980’s. Once the Eagles fell behind by double digits in the second quarter, the game was essentially over. That offense would have no chance of producing enough points to matter.

What I saw from early second quarter onward was an offense that did pretty much what it wanted to, even with a pretty vanilla plan. I didn’t get to watch the first quarter till this morning. Wow, was there some rust early on! There was miscommunication with the receivers at times, but the real glaring issue was the left side of the offensive line. Georgia Southern was stunting, blitzing and stemming, and the two new starters on that side of the ball were taken aback on several occasions.

Georgia Southern was able to get a lot of pressure on the quarterback early, and Jarrett Stidham took a beating. This culminated in a blind-side hit where Stidham had not even taken 3 steps, the ball popped out, and Georgia Southern cashed it for a scoop-and-score. However, I have to tip my hat to both Stidham and offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey. Stidham shook it off and played pretty well from that point on. Lindsey was a lot more guarded on what he called going left for the rest of the half.

The second half was a completely different story on the offensive line. The slide-protection concept was used most of the time, and the pocket held up well. Both Prince Tega Wanogho and Mike Horton are big, strong and agile linemen, and both have huge upsides. It’s up to the coaches to get them in the right spots. The whole line did really well on run blocking, too. When a variety of reserve running backs are having good days, the line is doing the job.

The issue that most worried me throughout the game was ball security. I saw numerous examples of ball carriers and receivers not tucking the ball away securely. Officially, Auburn had 4 fumbles, and unofficially, I saw about 5 dropped passes. Five drops on 26 pass attempts will get you beat in the SEC.

There were basically only 2 plays where Georgia Southern’s offense gained 10 yards or more. The rest of the time the offense went nowhere. I am going to have a hard time issuing a grade to the Auburn secondary because the ball never really made it to them! Auburn’s front seven was a terror. There were plays when Georgia Southern was unable to stop all 4 Auburn defensive linemen from getting into the backfield. Auburn’s linebackers completely neutralized options. There was nowhere for the ball to go that didn’t have a sure-tackling blue shirt streaking up to make the play.

The past few seasons, the key to moving the ball on Auburn was to locate Carl Lawson, and either double team him or run the play to the opposite side. When Lawson wasn’t in the game, Auburn was in serious trouble. At least from viewing this first game, that is no longer possible. Auburn is loaded with linemen that can penetrate and disrupt, and the bench is deep. Guys like Byron Cowart and Nick Coe had big days, which was good to see.

I thought Auburn had a very good special teams day, even with a couple of missed field goals. The misses were from 46 and 53 yards, and I can’t be too upset about those. Even in the NFL, 45+ yards is basically coin-flip, or worse, odds. Auburn kicked mostly touchbacks, and had great coverage on the one kick and one punt that were returnable. Georgia Southern displayed obvious fear of punting the ball to Stephen Roberts. Instead, they sacrificed yardage by kicking it out of bounds multiple times.

Unit Grades, after the jump!

Defensive Line: A+. I could count off for a facemask penalty and an offsides flag. I didn’t. The facemask looked inadvertent on Marlon Davidson. I will take one offsides penalty per game. That’s an effort penalty, I think. Auburn’s last Lombardi winner (Nick Fairley) was offsides here and there. Jeffrey Holland is in some good company, there! This is a deep and talented line that plays with a mean streak. This unit contributed 4 sacks, 6.5 tackles for loss and 30 total tackles. That’s astounding. Typically, the line gets about 10 tackles.

Linebackers: A+. What a big day Tré Williams had! He led the team with 10 tackles, and was usually around the ball. Aside from Williams, the other linebackers were in good position and did their jobs well. There really wasn’t as much of an opportunity for these guys because the line was swallowing up runners so well. The linebackers contributed 2 sacks, 3 tackles for loss, and 17 total tackles.

Secondary: A+. Georgia Southern was only able to attempt 8 passes, and none covered more than 7 yards on 4 completions. Aside from that, the Auburn secondary was active making tackles near the line of scrimmage. Stephen Roberts led the way with 4 tackles, 2 of them for a loss. The secondary generated 17 total tackles. Daniel Thomas intercepted the Eagles’ last hail Mary attempt.

Punting: B. Ian Shannon only had to punt once in this one and got off a nice 42-yarder with no return.

Punt Returns: B-. Stephen Roberts had only 1 return for 6 yards while the Eagles punted 11 times. It’s not Roberts’ fault, though, as the Eagles kicked away from him repeatedly. I did count off for one 61-yard Eagle punt. Roberts let that one get behind him. Fortunately, the ball didn’t roll much after it hit.

Kick Returns: A. There was only one returnable kick, and Javaris Davis popped it for 29 yards. With a little better blocking, he would have been gone.

Place Kicking: A. I counted off a little bit for the 2 misses, which is probably unfair. Daniel Carlson did nail one from 50 yards and became the top scorer in Auburn history. Carlson had 7 touchbacks on 8 kickoffs. On the one ball that was returned, the coverage team dumped the return man at the 12.

Offensive Line: B+. A few glaring errors lowered what was otherwise a pretty good effort. This line dominated Georgia Southern as long as they knew who to block. Late in the game, even the second-team line was having success.

Running Backs: A-. I counted off a bit for one fumble, although right tackle Darius James alertly fell on that loose ball. There were a handful of missed protections by some of the younger backs. I felt like all of the running backs ran well and had good vision. We all knew that Kam Martin was fast and a home run threat. I was pleasantly surprised by Martin’s ability between the tackles when he had to step into the number-one role. I hated seeing Kerryon Johnson’s injury as he was having a great game to that point. For the game, Johnson averaged 8.5 yards per carry, and Kam Martin had 9.7. The worst of the various backs that carried the ball was 5.0 yards per carry by Malik Miller. There wasn’t a bad average in the bunch. I was also impressed by the H-back blocking.

Receivers:B. I counted off mostly for drops and a lost fumble. For the most part, I think the receivers did a decent job of blocking, and they tried to sell their routes, even though a lot of it was just the same 4 verticals stuff from last season. Auburn did run some mesh and crossing routes on 3rd down and was very effective against a blitzing defense. I will look forward to this unit being back up to full strength next week!

Quarterback: B+. In his first Auburn start, Jarrett Stidham did not do too badly. There were a couple of crucial turnovers. I didn’t count off much on the fumble, even though it gave the Eagles their only points. What I did count off for was a first-quarter attempt to force the ball past a well-placed defender. What was good was that those sorts of throws weren’t repeated in the game, unlike the previous couple of seasons. After the fumble, Stidham regrouped and had a good day, scrambling and buying time and making some nice throws. I also loved seeing Devin Adams get a chance to play, late.

I enjoyed seeing a comfortable Auburn win, Saturday. We saw a lot of potential in this veteran, deep team. A big road trip to Clemson awaits this weekend. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers from this game, but we do have to remember that this was Georgia Southern. This was a 5–7 team from a year ago and not from a Power-5 conference. I expected before the game that Auburn should handily win both battles in the trenches. Clemson will be a different animal, particularly on the defensive front. We can’t have assignment gaffes this week.

I have to hand it to the Eagles for sticking with their plan and toughing the game out. Some teams would have panicked and started trying to air it out. Georgia Southern stuck to its plan and had a little late success. They got in a day of good work against probably the best defense they will see all year. There will be a lot more room to run on Sun Belt defenses.

And now, I hope everyone is enjoying a great Labor Day. Then it will be time to get back to work and get ready for a colossal battle in Clemson next weekend. I can’t wait! It will be my first full college football day of the season, and I plan to soak it all up!

.....Still making noise after all these years! Lifetime slacker, dreamer, and miscreant with a knack for calculation. I was born in the United State of Texas, but have spent the majority of my years here amongst the shaded hills of the Tragic City, enjoying glorious smog-enhanced sunsets. In a troubled county, I live in a little slice of paradise between the ridges of Red and Shades Mountains.
I've been an obsessive Auburn football follower since the Punt-Bama-Punt days, and have seen a lot of great football on the Plains. This lazy shirker finally learned the value of hard work and persistence from the fine folks in Auburn, and enjoys his return visits immensely!
Hobbies include guitar-playing (or really just making loud and weird noise on any sort of instrument or object), cooking, computers, tennis, and old-school pen and paper RPGs.
I love getting together with a good drink, great family, and friends..... (Acid Reign is Track ’Em Tigers’ Senior Editor). View Profile →

17 Comments

Glad to read another Acid Report, looked for this review all day yesterday. I was concerned about the youth on the O-line before the season and it showed up in the first half. Can not miss blocking assignments. I hope the first half miscues have been worked out and the Tigers will be steadied for Clemson.

…..I did not manage my time, this weekend. I had two 14-hour day shifts. My plan was to write the review immediately after the game. But, I switched over to see what was happening to Bama. Next thing I knew, I woke up and it was 1:30 AM, and I had a 4:00 AM alarm set for work.

…..Then Sunday night, I could not stay awake trying to watch the DVR. So, I gave up and aimed for this morning. Sloppy planning, on my part!

…..I does what I does. And I don’t regret doing what I have to do to support my family. I do hate when I mismanage things to the point where my responsibilities get get dropped. And frankly missing a blog post isn’t the worst thing to fail on. Still, I take my contributions to TrackEmTigers seriously. I’ve been way less punctual than usual, this year. I’m working on solutions…

…..As is typical for Auburn, we’ve got zero information from official channels. Hamstrings are tricky. From Auburn Network’s Ronnie Brown, he said that it was lower on the hamstring, and that from his experience, those heal quicker. I seriously doubt we’ll have KJ for Clemson. 2-4 weeks, maybe?

…..Any time that an offensive lineman is standing around with no one to block, and the QB gets hit after only two steps, it’s on the line. At the very least, that play wasn’t scripted right, even if it was set up to read the end. Kind of hard to read an end who is behind you…

If you are talking about the sack that was the only touchdown for Georgia Southern, the line is blocking. Tega completely handled his guy. Now, you could blame KJ for not blocking that guy, but, after looking at it more, Stidham has got to read that better. The one thing I can say with certainty, the OL was not at fault on the sack fumble touchdown play. Not at all.

Hey Sparkey, you got me wondering about that play because i thought the left tackle failed to block. So as I had DVR’ed it I went back and pulled it up and the left guard is standing up on the play and doesn’t attempt to block anyone. Maybe the running back didn't execute his assignment right either, i don't know. I couldn't say whether he was suppose to take the fake and plow into the line like he did or stay home and protect the QB but one thing was without question you had a lineman standing there not trying to engage anyone.

The guy wasn’t the left guard’s man. People have been blaming Prince Tega on that play the left tackle. Tega blows his guy up from the start of the play. The guy who makes the play is blitzing right at the last second.

Yes i know, I was one that was blaming Prince too. I was at the game and thought he had missed a tackle but after I saw your comment I went back and looked at the tape.
And you were right Prince engaged a defender so it wasn't the left tackle that missed a block But like Acid said there was "a lineman standing around with no one to block" and that guy was the Left Guard Mike Horton. So something was not right with the line on that play.

…..If it was a read play, then Stidham was facing the wrong way. He doesn’t have eyes in the back of his head. Could Stidham be at fault? We won’t know, because Gus/Chip aren’t going to tell us what play was called, there!

…..As Sparkey says, it could have been KJ’s responsibility to fake taking a handoff, then block that free defender. And possibly KJ ran the wrong way? I kind of doubt it. KJ really doesn’t miss assignments. He’s always been detail oriented, and he’s the best pass blocker we have in the backfield, right now.